What the delay confirms for me is that WB has no idea what it's doing with this film. It's obvious that their entire game plan the whole time has simply been to chase those
Avengers dollars with their own mega team-up movie ASAP, and now they're realizing that the entire thing is shaping up to be a giant cluster**** and they need more time.
We're getting a real sense of how modern Hollywood works these days in the post-
Avengers era, as every major studio attempts to imitate the Marvel model. But equally interesting is how much of these plans seem to indicate little-to-no awareness of why the Marvel model worked (building up a universe of heroes in their own individual franchises before crossing them over for the teamup mega-franchise). Each studio is trying to follow the model with mixed results.
Let's go through the list:
- Warner Bros. - Birthing pains attempting to kick off DC Cinematic Universe with psuedo-sequel to MOS that is really Justice League in disguise. Because WB is not exclusively dedicated to superhero films, they are used to having just one big superhero flick as their tentpole for a given year. Their entire business model is geared to that rather making multiple superhero films in a given year. As a result, they're now trying to throw everything into one movie and in a sense diluting the whole appeal of a mega-crossover like Avengers.
- Fox -- Trying to link original X-Men movies with First Class era. The most promising of the bunch at this point, judged purely on available evidence for the expanded universe (casting, trailers, etc.).
- Sony -- Attempting to build a "shared universe" around one character, Spider-Man, by making spin-off movies for his villains, which IMO is like a "shared universe lite". While I'm not saying it can't be done, building a movie around a superhero's villains without the superhero doesn't seem like a recipe for success. Sony's approach would be like the WB following up a Batman movie with Joker and Two-Face movies and calling it a "shared universe".
